MSI GS65 8RF Disassembly and RAM, SSD upgrade options

As a thin and light series of MSI game notebooks, the GS63 has brought us a very deep impression. The thin and light body, good performance, and at the same time silently bring the user experience enhancement in many small details have left us very good Impression. Now, MSI launched its latest upgrade, GS65 Stealth Thin. It uses a new shape and mold, as well as a new design, and now we have got an engineering prototype. Let us look at its internal structure.

In addition, the card reader in the official specification sheet was not found on the actual machine. It is worth mentioning that it is equipped with a 180W slim adapter.

1. Removing bottom plate

In order to get inside of the MSI GS65 8RF, you need to remove the bottom plate. You only need to remove all the screws fixing the bottom plate. There is no snap on it, so you can easily remove the bottom plate. On the back cover, you can find a label with following words on it, “This notebook is an engineering sample, not for selling. The software and application installed are for test and evaluation only.”

After removing the back cover, we can only access the back of the motherboard. The important components such as memory and SSD are on the other side of the motherboard. If you want to upgrade memory and SSD, you need to remove the motherboard. For beginners, it may be relatively more difficult.

2. Battery and speaker

The MSI GS65 8RF uses a pair of Dynaudio-certified loudspeakers located on both sides of the fuselage next to the battery. It features a 15.2V, 80.25Wh battery with a part number of BTY-M6L, the capacity is increased 20Wh compared to the previous generation. If you need to upgrade memory, SSD or remove other hardware, you need to disconnect the battery connector first or remove it directly. In order to remove the battery, you need to remove some screws securing it to the bottom. Of course, don’t forget to disconnect the battery connector from the motherboard.

3. Cooling system

Its cooling system is relatively complicated, but it is also powerful enough. The CPU fan is on the left. It is connected to the GPU heatsink on the right by a copper tube. The CPU fan on the right consists of two fans, which covers both GPU and GPU video memory.

4. M.2 SSD, RAM and Wi-Fi card

The laptop comes with an Intel Wireless-AC 9560 Wi-Fi card. It supports Dual band, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 5. It has two RAM slots and comes with two Kingston 8GB DDR4 2400 RAM. They support up to 32 GB DDR4 memory with speeds up to 2666 MHz. The laptop comes with a Samsung 256GB PM871a M.2 SATA SSD, we have tested that both M.2 slots support PCI-e 3.0×4 NVMe SSD.